TUNA A MOVEABLE FEAST FOR FISHING BOATS
AT MARTIN VERDUGO'S BEACH RESORT

April 8, 2005, Gary Leeper, at Martin Verdugo's Beach Resort, Baja, East Cape, Mexico:

A pretty good week of fishing on the East Cape, if you were at the right spot at the right time. What else is new?

Tuna were found by a few East Cape charter fishing cruisers out 27 to 50 miles, but the spot keeps changing, so finding them is chance.

Dorado from 20 to 35 pounds were also among the porpoise and tuna in the warm water spots.

East Cape marlin fishing continues to be amazing, and anybody that wanted to catch one just had to show up between La Ribera and Punta Colorada. Many, many multiple hookups were reported. Most were dunking live bait, but plug trollers were scoring also.

The marlin are mostly two to four miles off, in 260 to 1200 feet of water. Almost all of the bait being sold here now is mackerel, and that is what people are jigging also. I heard some radio reports of people jigging their bait right in the same area where they were catching the marlin and toro.

There have been some pretty good bait boils in the area through midday, evidenced by birds working and the toro going nuts.

Two weeks ago, Sam and I got in the middle of one of the boils and caught a dodo, a marlin, and a toro all in about 15 minutes. A large percentage of the marlin hookups are coming off live bait dead drifted 50 to 100 feet deep. I believe from conversations I have had that part of the bait boils may also be on the true sardines, but very few will use those because of the scale loss and clogging of bait tanks. This marlin activity has been going on in that area for better than a year, but this week, and especially Thursday and Friday, were the best I have seen in our four years of being here.

Mixed in with the marlin bite were some frenetic toro schools, to the point where many East Cape anglers fled rather than hook another.

East Cape fishing vacation area water temperatures are fluctuating daily from 69 to 76 degrees. Air temperatures are in the mid 60's to high 80's. The East Cape sportfishing fleet had a little fun today with thick fog off Punta Colorado.